


A View From the Top You’ve Never Seen Before

by fencer_x



Category: Free!, Haikyuu!!
Genre: 2012 Summer Olympics, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M, Rival Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 17:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14313942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencer_x/pseuds/fencer_x
Summary: [SASO Final Day - Crossover AU] Rin and Haru have made it to the Olympics--but lodging issues have them rooming in the Village with two members of the Japanese men's volleyball team, rather than their fellow teammates.





	A View From the Top You’ve Never Seen Before

“Here,” Haruka offered, tapping the saucer and the teacup balanced upon it a bit closer when the act of setting it on the table alone failed to draw his flatmate’s attention. A decent cup of _mugicha_ was difficult to come by at this time of night (or any time, really, inside the Olympic Village), and he was already patting himself on the back for having made sure to pack enough to last all three weeks in London.

Bright brown eyes blinked up at him. “Huh? Oh—thank you.” He reached for the cup, fingers twitching when they brushed the rim. “Wow, it’s cool… Where did you manage to find chilled _mugicha_ around here?“

“I brewed it myself,” Haruka explained, sliding into an empty chair across the table and nursing his own cup. He watched with silent curiosity as the boy—Hinata, he recalled from the room roster—went back to poring over the tattered notebook full of scribbles Haruka couldn’t hope to decipher. Team strategy, perhaps; the Opening Ceremony was still days away and any matches or races nearly a week out, but Haruka could sympathize with the feeling that any down-time would be better spent preparing for the competitions ahead. Rin was out on one of his evening jogs, claiming he wanted to explore the complex and while Haruka still didn’t like road-training in the least, he probably ought to have joined him.

Glancing around, he took in their quarters with an objective eye for the first time. When they’d arrived the evening before, they’d all four of them been battered by jet-lag and ready to curl up in the nearest open field, if it came to that, so the state of their lodgings hadn’t been something any of them had paid attention to. Rin was probably used to Western-style homes, too, so he likely had no complaints either way.

The apartments weren’t too terrible, all things considered; they carried the distinct smell of new wood and freshly applied paint, and while some might have found the layout a bit cramped for four, Haruka found it cozy. It was certainly a step up from his Tokyo apartment, and they wouldn’t be living here long enough for quarters to become too close.

He wasn’t thrilled that there was only one bathroom—and only a standing shower, with no tub to speak of—but Rin had just laughed at his sour expression and clapped his shoulder, reminding in a low voice edged in promise _guess we’ll just have to find other ways to help you unwind_.

They had been roomed with two members of the Japanese men’s volleyball team—Hinata and Kageyama, overflow from the rest of their team quartered in the remaining apartments on their own floor and the one above. Most of the swim team were sharing apartments on the floor below, with Rin and Haru unfortunate odd men out. Or fortunate for the privacy, as Rin seemed to see it, ever one to find a silver lining. Haruka felt it would have been better all around if they’d been roomed with Ikuya and Nao-sempai, seeing as they’d be swimming the relay of their lives together in just under two weeks, but Rin had just shrugged, reminded him they’d have plenty of time to practice their exchanges before then, and added with a leer, _”One crisis at a time, Nanase; maybe you ought to be focusing on how I’m gonna kick your ass in the 100-meter freestyle next week first?”_

And he was, naturally; but he’d raced Rin plenty of times before. He’d raced people _not_ Rin plenty of times before. This relay, though…it would be their first international competition as a real _team_ and not a hasty compilation of the fastest swimmers in every stroke. It had taken _months_ to work on their exchanges, to build themselves up into a team that could stand toe-to-toe with the best the international circuit had to offer, so he was now left feeling something he wasn’t accustomed to: nerves. Not because he thought they might lose, but because of how it might feel once they _won_.

Winning a relay always filled him with a _completely_ different sensation than winning on his own, and while it had taken him time to come to accept that it was _okay_ to want to win as himself, to be _excited_ and _relieved_ when he brushed the wall before anyone else, the relay had never been a burden. It had _always_ been fun, always something reminding him that enjoying having someone there to pull you out of the water and into a crushing victory hug at the end of a well-swum race was nothing to be ashamed of. That feeling the water was nice, but feeling it with someone else could be even _nicer_.

Sometimes he missed the simplicity of swimming for himself, as himself—but raking his gaze down the roster detailing the lineup for the Games and seeing his name printed alongside Rin’s, Ikuya’s, and Nao-sempai’s…for a moment there, he forgot there’d ever been a moment when _this_ wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be: in a hastily-erected apartment complex in East London, sitting across the table sipping fresh-brewed _mugicha_ with someone who looked entirely too small to play volleyball with any degree of skill, waiting for his self-affirmed rival to return from an evening jog he hadn’t been invited on but kind of wished he had.

Hinata set his cup back down onto its saucer with a soft _clink_ before wiping his hands over his face and groaning audibly. “I’m never gonna get these new plays down before Saturday…” He let his head drop forward onto the table, tapping the wood with his forehead as he muttered, “I’m gonna go right when I’m supposed to go left because I _always_ go right on plays like this, and then Kageyama’s gonna bitch me out and call me a dumbass in front of _millions_ of people and I wanna be remembered as the shortie that brought gold to Zen-Nihon Danshi, not the ‘dumbass’ that got Japan knocked out in the first round.” He cocked his head to the side, looking to Haruka for sympathy with a pallor that said he might be ill very soon. “Is that too much to ask?”

Perhaps sitting down to share the tea with his flatmate hadn't been a good idea after all. He tried to change the subject—perhaps distracting Hinata would help. "Aren't you a little short for a volleyball player?"

Hinata bristled, shooting straight up, "I—no! I mean, well, a little, kind of—but I earned my position fair and square, and height isn't everything, and I'm damn good at what I do!" He snatched up his teacup and knocked it back like a shot. "I deserve to be here as much as anyone else," he announced to no one, setting the cup back down and flipping forward a few pages in his notebook. His tone had lost its edge, and he sounded to Haruka a bit like he'd rehearsed these lines, having likely fielded comments on his height many times before.

"...I didn't mean to offend. It was just an observation. I doubt I know enough about volleyball to understand the particulars."

Hinata just shrugged, doodling fat little black birds in the margins of his notebook. "If you love something enough, and you work hard enough at it, you can do anything—at least, that's what I believe." His lips curved into a smile, and he repeated what sounded like a self-scripted mantra as he tapped his chin with the butt of his pen: "Hard work will eventually win out over innate talent." 

A faint chill shuddered down Haruka's spine at the words, a sense of foreboding passing over his mind like the dark shape of a shark passing through the water, as Rin's own voice echoed in his mind: _I'll show you that there’s no such thing as talent that hard work can't eventually surpass._ He shifted in his chair, disguising his discomfort with another sip of his tea. "What about innate talent coupled with hard work, then?"

Hinata grimaced, shoulders slumping. "That...well, then I'll just have to work even _harder_." He steeled his jaw and made a little fist and held it to his chest. "...I'm not ready to go down yet. There's someone I want to defeat...before I step out of the ring."

Issues with remembering plays seemed to have been momentarily forgotten as Hinata's thoughts turned instead to the pursuit of some goal beyond merely winning or losing—something Haruka could identify with _very_ much. He watched Hinata warily, discomfited by the echoes of familiarity in his words. It was disturbingly easy to see snatches of himself, of Rin, in these idle comments of Hinata's—some he was less keen to acknowledge than others. Underlying Hinata's boasts of positions earned and dreams of glory on the international stage Haruka detected the urge to prove himself, to stay in that _place_ , for as long as possible, if only to beat out that _one other person_ whose existence, for whatever reason, mattered more than it by all rights ought to.

He didn't know the first thing about volleyball—but he understood rivalries, and the extent to which they could color your view of the future, however near or far ahead you looked.

Hinata was hunched over his playbook again, brows furrowed and mien set firmly as he mouthed instructions to himself. He looked rather young, when Haruka took a second glance, and he was reminded here not of himself or Rin, but of Nagisa. Not the Nagisa of now—who, last he'd heard, was raising hell on Osaka Bay with a summer internship as he worked on a Marine Biology degree—but the Nagisa he'd first met when he was 12, all eager and bright-eyed but still one to be cowed by the thought of failure. He'd never wound up quite growing out of his habit of bursting into tears at the drop of a hat—even _Rin_ wasn't that bad—and he likely never would. Hinata had that look to him—a delicate shell housing that sharp wariness like Nagisa got just before a race, that said he was small in build but large in determination and if you didn't keep an eye on him, he'd sneak up on you and tear your legs out from beneath you like an undertow.

"...So when are your...what, races, I guess?" Whether he'd lost focus on his play memorization or was just trying to distract himself again, Hinata seemed keen to continue their conversation and sat straight in his chair, leaning onto the table with brows lifted curiously.

Haruka paused a moment, raking a judging gaze over him; he certainly didn't seem all that concerned with memorizing his plays, despite five minutes ago despairing that he was going to be the chink in his team's armor that knocked them out in the first round. He frowned, but allowed, "...My first heat is next Monday; then I'll have others throughout the week. The relay isn't for nearly two weeks, though."

"So are you fast?" Haruka's brows drew together—what sort of question was that? "Like—do you think you're gonna win?"

He opened his mouth, ready to spout his tried and true _I don't care about winning or losing_ —before reflecting that no, that wasn't true. It hadn't been true for years. Maybe he didn't really care about Gold or seeing his name on the scoreboard (so long as there was a number alongside it one higher than that flanking Rin's) or hearing _Kimi ga Yo_ echoing around the Aquatics Centre, but he _cared_. Rin was always harping on him to be more honest with himself, and while he'd bite his tongue before he gave Rin that satisfaction, he supposed a moment's frankness with a virtual stranger wouldn't hurt: "...Yes, I do. Otherwise I wouldn't be here." He turned the question over in his mind, distilling it down to the motivating components, then pressed, "...Is this your first Olympics?"

Hinata slumped back into his chair, tossing his pen onto the table, and began scratching nervously at his hair. "Not just my first Olympics—my first _any_ kind of international competition! I mean, I've been playing pro for like—three years now? And I played all through high school and college, and I guess I'm pretty good—or I couldn’t have made it this far, right?—but the closest I've ever come to playing an international team was a three-set match against a Chinese team in some goodwill exhibition match put on by our sponsor." He covered his eyes and moaned in recollection. "I totally screwed up one of the plays in _that_ one too... Kageyama still gets a kick out of insulting me in Mandarin now and then. I don't know what _bái chī_ means, but when I find out..." He made a fist and punched his opposite palm threateningly, and Haruka raised a brow.

"Kageyama...that's the other player rooming here?" A nod. "And you don't get along?"

"Hell no!" Hinata snapped, then seemed to remember his place—or rather, rethought his response, continuing with less certainty, "I mean... He's not too bad, sometimes, I guess. He's got a mouth on him, and he's always calling me _dumbass_ or _shit-for-brains_ or whatever _bái chī_ means, but..." He shrugged. "It's different on the court."

"You set aside your differences for the sake of the team."

A nod. "But not just that—we're rivals! I made him promise not to lose to anyone else until I can kick his ass, and I promised him the same." He gave a haughty sniff. "Not that I expect that to be a problem for me." The shifts in Hinata's demeanor, from cocky confidence to woeful despair, would give anyone whiplash.

"...But you're on the same team."

"So?"

Haruka frowned. "How can you be rivals when you're on the same team?"

Hinata blinked his silent confusion for a moment before returning the question: "Well what about you and Matsuoka-san?"

"What about us?"

"You're on the same team, aren't you? But I still heard Matsuoka-san say something about being sure to at least make it to the semi-finals, because the NHK wasn't going to broadcast anything below the top-16 and he wanted everyone watching at home to see him 'blow you out of the water', I think it was." He perched on the edge of his chair, head cocked to the side. "You're rivals, right? But you're still on the same team."

Haruka filed away the insult to bring up with Rin later. "...The same relay team; swimming is an individual sport, though. We'll still compete against one another in our individual heats.”

Hinata's face screwed up into a frown, clearly dissatisfied with the response. "Well, yeah, I guess—but, it's just...different. We work together, but even on the court, even when I'm hanging in the air waiting for his toss..." He clenched a fist, then uncurled it, staring at his palm as he lost himself in remembrance of games past. "It's like I'm thinking about how it's not another team on the other side of the net, not another country—it's _him_ , and I don't want him to win, I don't want him to be disappointed in me. I want him to see the best me I have to offer, and I want the same from him. He's my strongest ally and my greatest enemy! Best of both worlds!" He flashed a smile and rubbed his nose a bit sheepishly. "I mean, I guess I know logically that there's probably lots of players out there who are better than either of us—or maybe even better than both of us put together, but...somehow it's different. Because we're rivals."

Haruka didn't quite follow his logic, but somehow it sat well with him—two weeks from now, this would all be over, and they'd be back on a plane to Japan for a few weeks of downtime before they had to start thinking about time trials for the World Championships less than a year out. But now—here, they had the eyes of the world on them and wide open lanes of blue that begged to be charged down. Each faltering step and leap of faith had brought them here, to this grand stage, _together_ , and Hinata was right: it was _different_. It was about winning, but more so, it was about winning _against_ Rin, _with_ Rin, because for better or worse, Rin made it all matter more. He made the thrill of victory more exhilarating and the sting of defeat keener, and Haruka _loved_ it, because as long as Rin was there, he would never be swimming alone. He had the thoughts of his friends at his back and the real, physical presence of a friend in the lane next to him.

Rin had told him once, what felt like ages ago, that he'd always admired Haruka, that he needed Haruka swimming in front of him to give Rin a goal to strive for, a city on a hill to aspire to.

Rin would have to learn to be careful what he wished for, if he ever wanted to win Gold.

The door to the flat clattered open as Rin trudged in—heard before he was even seen, because he was bickering loudly with their final flatmate hot on his heels. "The goal was the lamp post, we _both_ agreed on it. I don't fucking care if you reached the stairwell first. _I_ made it to the lamp post first!"

Kageyama slammed the door shut behind them and grimaced around a swig of water, looking like he'd just swallowed a lemon. "All I have to say is I certainly hope you're not on the track team; you can't name some arbitrary point your goal just because you happen to be closer to it at any given time."

"I'm a _swimmer_ you little ass-hat—I just jog to build stamina." He raked Kageyama with a withering glare. "Good luck winning Gold on those skinny stick-legs, by the way. Obviously all that milk you've been sucking down hasn't done shit for your—"

" _Kageyama_!" Hinata snapped, shoving his chair back as he stalked forward waving a finger accusingly. "Why didn't you wait for me?! I said I wanted to go jogging with you!" Rin stepped out of the way, blinking stupidly with the wind having been sucked from his sails as Hinata started in on his own argument.

"I told you I was going at 8; you weren't in the lobby on time, so you got left behind."

"I was in the _bathroom_! I told you to wait like, two minutes! Jerk!"

"The bathroom's not the lobby," Kageyama shrugged, clearly not bothered by Hinata's absence. "I'm taking first shower, Matsuoka-san; perhaps you should see about getting a cold compress." He whipped a towel around his shoulders and headed down the hall, Hinata trailing behind with complaints still on his lips.

Haruka frowned at the quip, directing his attention to Rin. "A compress? You hurt yourself? That was stupid—you know we've got—"

Rin waved him off with an irritated huff. "The prick's talking about the ass-kicking he thinks he just gave me." He slid into Hinata's recently vacated seat, peering into the empty teacup with a hopeful gaze that had Haru standing to pour him his own cup of tea before being asked. "You should've come along; the grounds are great, though it could do with some more vantage points. Not much to see beyond buildings buildings buildings." He muttered a soft _thanks_ when Haruka set a cup of the _mugicha_ he'd brewed before him. "You and Hinata have a nice little chat?"

Haruka murmured a noncommittal reply before recalling their conversation, and he bit out with a frown, "You're not going to blow me out of the water."

Rin stifled a giggle into his teacup. "Mm, maybe not on the 100 meter—but you'd better watch your back in the 200." He snapped his jaws with a threatening grin. "Makoto gave me some great last-minute pointers on how to bring you down on the longer stretches."

"Makoto doesn't know anything like that—and even if he did, he wouldn't tell you."

"Wouldn't he?" Rin challenged with a lift of his brow. "Maybe he's got money riding on me winning; I don't imagine teaching three-year-olds how to doggy paddle is a terribly lucrative position." Haruka cut him a reprimanding glare, and he ducked a nod in apology, "Kidding, kidding." He lifted the teacup in a toasting gesture. "But I'm still gonna kick your ass."

"Keep telling yourself that," Haruka allowed, finishing the rest of his cup in one gulp. "I'm going to bed."

"Ah—I'll go too, then."

Haruka swiped a glance over him, sniffing. "...You need a shower, first. You'll stink up the room."

" _Ouch_ ," Rin feigned hurt, clutching his chest, then twisted around in his chair to straddle the back as he watched Haruka rinse their cups out in the sink. "I don't recall hearing any complaints about my manly musk before, though."

"Because we always wound up in the bath, afterward," Haruka reminded, turning off the spray with a flick of his wrist and reaching for a dishtowel. "Kageyama should be out soon—and Hinata's already in bed, as far as I can tell, so the shower should be free."

"Mmm," Rin mused, glancing down the hall conspiratorially. "Then how about once our roomies are safely tucked in, you help me with my scrub down?" Haruka tossed the dishtowel in his face, leaving him sputtering his annoyance. "Wha—screw you." When Haruka breezed past, though, he was immediately penitent, snapping a hand out to grab his wrist. "How about a good luck fuck, then? They loaded us down with enough condoms to do it morning, noon, and night the whole time we're here. Can't let them go to waste."

Haruka rolled his eyes, reminding flatly, “You can’t keep quiet enough for that.” 

Rin changed tacks. "Good luck suck, then? You know I have trouble falling asleep on a pillow I'm not used to." The bathroom door opened, steam billowing out as Kageyama exited, and Haruka took advantage of the distraction to disappear into their room. Rin jogged after him, waiting until the door to Hinata and Kageyama's room had shut before allowing, "Yeah, you're right—we should save that to celebrate our victories."

Haruka cast a glance over his shoulder, one hand on a dresser drawer to pull out something to sleep in, and was about to deliver another sound rejection—though Rin could hardly be blamed for being giddy, this close to fulfilling his dream—when what he'd just said sank in: _our victories_.

Because one way or another, Rin knew—bone-deep, gut-sure—that they were both going to come out of this victorious. Maybe they'd only take the relay, maybe they'd scrape out wins in their individual races; either way, they hadn't come this far to go back without making their mark, and this—like so many other things they'd put their hearts and souls into over the years—was just something they both _understood_ , innately. It was that same confidence that had reassured them _this_ was where they belonged: by each other's sides and at each other's backs, pushing one another on or else pulling along when necessary.

If he'd been Rin, he might have made some embarrassingly romantic comment here, about threads of fate and binding ties, how where they were was exactly where they were always meant to be. But he wasn't Rin, couldn't have said anything like that even on pain of death, so instead, he draped a pair of sleep bottoms over one arm and clapped Rin on the shoulder and squeezed softly as he shuffled past toward the bathroom to brush his teeth. "...You're going jogging again in the morning?"

Rin blinked at the question. "I...yeah. That's usually when I do my jogging, anyway; I just wanted to scope out the grounds tonight."

Haruka nodded, then pulled his hand away and reached for the door. "...Wake me; I'll go with you." And he meant it, in every sense.

* * *

**Coda**

“…The opening ceremony’s in four days.”

“…Mmm…”

“And then we’ve got our first match in five.”

“…Go to sleep, Hinata…”

Hinata lay flat on his back in his cramped little bed, hand raised to the ceiling as he clutched it into a fist, clenching tight. “…We’re going all the way. It’ll be our first match, and then we’ll have a second, and a third. We’ll go to the finals, and then we’ll take them.” He shifted up onto his elbows, staring out into the darkness at his roommate. “We didn’t come this far to get knocked out in the first round.”

He was met with nothing but silence for several long moments—so long, in fact, that he thought perhaps Kageyama had drifted off, until out of the darkness came, “…Do you not trust me?”

“Of course I do!” he fired back immediately, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks.

The creak of bedsprings told him Kageyama had shifted upright. “Then what was that about?”

Hinata frowned, not entirely sure himself. “I was just…reminding you.”

A snort. “I don’t need reminders. I know what I’m supposed to do. So as long as you don’t get out there and serve the ball into the back of my head again or try to headbutt the ball over the net—“

Hinata groaned, flopping back down and covering his face with his hands. “That was _one time_. And I nearly knocked myself out.”

“—then we’ll be fine. I told you: as long as I’m here, you’re invincible.”

Hinata let the reminder hang between them, steeling himself to ask, “…But what about you? Who’s going to help you be invincible?”

He expected the usual haughty response, a snorting sneer couched in a tone that brooked no argument reminding Hinata that I don’t need help, but what he got instead was an unsettlingly soft, “…I guess you’ll do.”

Swallowing thickly against the rising heartbeat that threatened to leap into his throat, Hinata threw an arm over his eyes, blocking out even the faint moonlight streaming in through the flimsy curtains on the window. “…Don’t go out jogging without me again, jerk. Take me with you.”

Kageyama’s voice was heavy with sleep. “Don’t get nervous about a game that’s still a week out and lock yourself in the bathroom for a half hour again, then.”

“Dinner was heavy!” he snapped defensively. “I’m not used to all this English food! And anyway, I—”

But he was stopped from further protests by loud banging on the wall as the next-door-neighbors (and teammates, Hinata recalled with a nervous gulp) shouted at them to pipe down. 

He huffed his irritation, but tugged the covers up and over his head, slowing his breathing and closing his eyes. His last conscious thoughts of the evening were _I should ask Matsuoka-san for some good English insults in the morning…_


End file.
